Irvine Valley Mistakes and Inappropriate Use of Economic Statistics Analysis
Question Description
You have been hired by a struggling think tank that does economic analysis for politicians. Your first task is to review the first draft of a speech that a politician is preparing to give at a press conference. The speech talks about the current state of the economy. Upon reading the draft you realize that the draft contains mistakes with regard to economic statistics and uses economic data in a way that does not provide evidence for some of the conclusions in the speech.
Your task is to write a report that does three things:
1) describes the mistakes and the inappropriate use of economic statistics in the speech
2) proposes what additional or alternative statistics would be better suited to support the conclusions of the speech.
3) provide explanations for your suggestions and your findings so that your think tank does not make these mistakes again.
The report is below:
“The last year has been great for our economy and for our citizens. GDP growth of 4.4% signals an increase in the real output produced by our economy. It is too early to say before more detailed data are released, but we estimate that the biggest contribution to GDP growth came from the increase in private consumption, in particular the increase in construction of new homes in our capital. Overall, we can conclude that the wellbeing of the workers all around the country improved significantly.
The unemployment rate has reached a historic low of 1.4 % which is a clear indication that people who want to be employed are finding jobs and that the number of people working is at an all-time high. However, one must be careful when assessing the low unemployment rate because some people might have two or more jobs, which would artificially bring the unemployment rate down.
In other good news, compared to last year, gas prices have increased by 0.6% only, which means that inflation is also incredibly low. In addition, last year new legislation increased the minimum wage by 20% compared to the last legislation passed 20 years ago. Needless to say, the minimum wage workers of today are much better off than the minimum wage workers of the past given this significant increase. Overall, we can confidently state that economic statistics described above indicate a rapid increase in the living standards of the population.”
NOTE: assume that the actual numbers are not the problem, given that this is a made-up speech. Focus on the definition of concepts and how they relate to the conclusions that the speech makes.

Writing Assignment Rubric
Criteria Ratings Pts
Identifying the Mistakes/ Inaccuracies
Full credit will be given to people who miss at most 1 mistake/inaccuracy in the assignment.
Alternative Suggestions
Full credit will be given to people who for each mistake they identify propose a measure that would better support the conclusion or explain why this measure is adequate / no better measure exists.
Explanation
Full credit will be given if a clear and full explanation is given as to why each particular conclusion is not supported by economic data presented in the draft.

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